I’ve all the time cherished to sing the hymn “Silent Night.” It is so seared into my mind that I can’t assist however hum it after I see the primary Christmas decorations displaying up round city. But as a lot as I really like the hymn, the phrases problem my creativeness a bit, particularly the primary two traces: “Silent night, holy night. / All is calm, all is bright.”
When I think about the evening our Savior was born, the final issues I think about are silence and calm.
The solely factor I’ve to match to that holy evening is the nights that I gave beginning. I bear in mind so clearly the docs and nurses dashing round, the newborns crying, the occasional guests, the buzzing of equipment, and the groans of ache. Everything was removed from calm and silent. In the steady, in fact, there have been no docs or nurses or equipment buzzing, however there have been little question guests, a new child crying, in all probability much more groaning from horrible unmedicated ache, and worse, the soiled hay and stressed, smelly animals rustling throughout.
So, at first look, the hymn “Silent Night” appears to sugarcoat the Holy Family’s expertise. After all, along with the cacophony of sounds throughout them, they’d quickly must flee a king who wished their new child useless. Calm is unquestionably not how I think about Mary and Joseph felt. How then, will we interpret what Fr. Joseph Mohr was pondering when he jotted down these phrases greater than 200 years in the past?
Reflecting on these first moments with my oldest, I bear in mind one thing else apart from the chaos, the noise, and the worry of abruptly being answerable for the lifetime of the brand new human being earlier than me.
I bear in mind the briefest of moments after I first held my son’s hand in mine, such a small gesture that indicated that he was mine and I used to be his from at the present time ahead. As I held his tiny hand and watched his fingers transfer in mine, the chaos surrounding each of us was stilled for simply the briefest of seconds earlier than it began up once more.
“Silent Night” is a robust reminder of the awed silence we expertise when the area between heaven and earth narrows, and God comes shut. This track is a reminder that repeatedly we’re overcome by God’s presence, proper right here on this damaged but fantastically human world.
